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Take it Easy with Coloring Pages {Craft Challenge, Day 38}

Before I started the ODC Craft Challenge I came up with a list of about 100 different activities that I could use.

I wanted to be sure that I had things to try and to write about so I wouldn’t peter out in week six.

And while it’s gone pretty smoothly so far in terms of having a general theme for a few days at a time and some idea of what I wanted to do next, I hit this weekend with no plan at all. No idea of what I should do and no real inspiration.

So I looked at my list.

Better, I picked some random numbers — 11 out of my head and three with the random number generator — to get me through the next couple of weeks. I can change them if I come up with better ideas, but at least this gives me a plan, which was a big part of my goal for this month.

Today’s number was 8: coloring pages.

Tips for Working with Coloring Pages

Coloring pages are a great creative challenge for a Sunday because they’re easy. Even if you don’t have grown up coloring books lying around, you might have a kid’s coloring book, or there are tons of free printables for kids and adults alike online.

I typically use colored pencils on my coloring pages, but you can also use markers or crayons or some combination depending on the spaces you’re coloring.

If I’m working from a book (like this one, Coloring for Tranquility, I just got recently as part of the Parragon Book Buddy program) I like to tear out the page even if it’s not perforated. These were not. They’re also printed on both sides, which I don’t love, but the images are all two-page spreads so even if you lose half to coloring with markers that bleed, you’ll still have one of that page to work with.

Using coloring pages is really all about process. They don’t have to be perfect, or ever finished, and you don’t really have to think about what you’re doing.

It should be meditative, easy, free-flowing and fun.

I have a Mason jar full of colored pencils and I like to just pull one out at random, color with it, set it aside and repeat until the jar is empty. Then I randomly pick one up off the table and repeat the process in reverse.

It’s funny to me that I don’t love coloring pages for kids (though the girl loves them and will ask for very specific things she wants to color) because I feel like they’re not as creative as just letting kids draw, but for adults I think they’re great because a blank page might be too much for you to start with.

Anyone can color a coloring page, right? It doesn’t require artistic skill and there’s no right or wrong. That’s the kind of low threshold a lot of grownups need to get going.